By Gina Lee

Investing.com – Asia Pacific stocks were down on Tuesday morning following Russia’s troops into breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine, intensifying tensions between the West and Russia over Ukraine. to a seven-year high.

Japan’s fell 2.09% by 9:44 PM ET (2:44 AM GMT). Early in Asia, the safe-haven currency yen was 0.2% lower to close to $11.40 per dollar.

South Korea’s fell 1.86%. Thursday will see the Bank of Korea announce its policy decisions.

Australia saw a drop of 1.34%.

Hong Kong’s was down 2.81%.

China’s was down 1.13% while the was down 1.73%. The People’s Bank of China’s released on Monday, which stayed unchanged at 3.7%.

Russia president Vladimir Putin recognized Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine as independent entities, and ordered Russian troops to “maintain peace” in the two breakaway regions on Monday.

The U.S. and Europe vowed new sanctions against Russia’s move, but it was not clear whether the West will see the military action as the start of a full-scale invasion.
“We are much closer to military intervention, which of course is going to drive a lot of the risk off sentiment in the markets,” Carlos Casanova, senior Asia economist at UBP, told Reuters. He added the short-term volatility in markets was “relentless”, led by both geopolitical factors and the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Casanova stated that the decision would result in higher oil prices and an equity sale, as well as people fleeing to safer assets such the Japanese yen.

Ten-year Treasury benchmark yields plunged as high as 5.5 basis points, to 1.8715%. Michelle Bowman (Federal Reserve Governor) stated that Monday’s economic data will be closely monitored over the coming weeks in order to decide if it is appropriate to raise the interest rates by one-half percentage point at the Central Bank’s March meeting.

It will issue its data policy decision on Wednesday.